JAY DUNN: Remembering Musial, Weaver and Miller

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

When it comes to living legends, baseball suffered through a miserable winter. Stan Musial, Earl Weaver and Marvin Miller were all living legends last fall when the 2012 season came to an end. By the time spring training opened they had become the other kind of legend. The kind often called baseball immortals.

All three were unique figures. There has never been another remotely like any of them, and yet, all three had at least one important personality trait in common: Each chose to defy conventional thinking in at least one important way and each was successful, at least in part, because of it.

When Weaver became manager of the Orioles in 1968, “small ball” was in vogue everywhere from the major leagues to the sandlots. Virtually everyone who taught the game or managed it stressed bunting and advancing runners, especially with the hit-and-run.

Weaver would have none of that. He seldom bunted and he didn’t even have a hit-and-run sign. He famously said he preferred three-run homers to hit-and-run singles.

Of course, everybody else did too, but Weaver managed the game in a way that gave Orioles batters more opportunity to hit three-run homers.

“We’ll make our 27 outs at home plate,” is the way he explained it.

What he meant was he didn’t want to risk an out to advance a runner to second or third, much less give one up on purpose (i.e. sacrifice) to move a man. He understood that he needed to have two runners on base before someone could hit a three-run homer. It didn’t matter which bases they were on.

He played “moneyball” two decades before Billy Beane acted as though he invented the concept. When everyone else wanted to play small ball the Orioles played large ball, and it and made it work.

In 17 years Weaver’s teams won 1480 games and four American League pennants. Five of his teams won 100 or more games. His only losing season was his last — 1986.

Miller was a lawyer and labor negotiator who found a way to empower the previously wimpy players’ association. Before being retained by the players he had distinguished himself as a tough bargainer for the steel workers. His critics, and he had many, complained bitterly that he didn’t understand the difference between sports negotiations and industrial negotiations.

Those critics were dead wrong. Miller was successful precisely because he did draw that distinction and was able to make it work on behalf of his clients.

When Miller came on board baseball’s employment conditions were so one-sided that they bordered on feudalism. Players were bound to a single club throughout their careers. Owners could trade a player whenever they wished, but the player could never change teams on his own volition. All contracts were one-year deals with the player being paid whatever the owner dictated.

Even the steel companies Miller was used to dealing with wouldn’t have dreamed of treating their workers in such a shabby manner. The laws of the United States wouldn’t permit it.

Baseball owners argued that a 1922 Supreme Court ruling that the game was exempt from anti-trust laws gave them the right to impose their system on the players. In truth, no one had ever challenged it in court and the owners were wary of what might happen if someone did challenge it. Miller, very cleverly, exploited that wariness.

First he got the owners to agree to establish an arbitration system, mostly to determine salaries for veteran players but also to hear other grievances.

He won a few small but significant victories. Then, in 1975, came the big one — an arbitrator’s ruling that essentially made every player a free agent. The owners challenged the ruling in court and were rebuffed.

If Miller hadn’t understood the difference between labor negotiations in the steel industry and labor negotiations in the baseball industry, he simply have taken that victory and run with it. However, he was shrewd enough to know that ruling, by itself, was no victory at all.

The players would prosper only if the industry prospered and the industry would prosper only if there was competition. Universal free agency with no restrictions would create a handful of super teams and all the others would be along for the ride, which would be increasingly bumpy. The game would suffer and so would most of the players.

Miller promptly agreed that the ruling needed to be modified in order to preserve competition and worked with the owners to put such a system into place.

He changed the game more than anyone had since Kennesaw Mountain Landis and some day, I have little doubt, will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

Musial was much more than a merely a Hall of Fame player. He was one of the elite Hall of Famers. He won seven batting titles even though he hit with power. In 15 of his 22 seasons he had at least 30 doubles. He reached double figures in triples seven times.

He did all that with a strange left-handed stance that had pitchers shaking their heads about how Musial was “swinging around the corner” at them. Television announcers would admonish youngsters not to try to copy the stance. It seemed to defy logic, but it worked brilliantly for the player called Stan the Man.

Musial was more than a Hall of Fame baseball player. He was also a Hall of Fame human being. Honor and dignity were very important to him. Everyone in baseball, it seemed, was proud to consider him a friend.

On May 12, 1958 Musial went one-for-four as the Cardinals defeated the Cubs in Wrigley Field. The hit was No. 2,999 of Musial’s glorious career. The next one would make him only the eighth player in baseball history to reach 3,000.

The Cardinals were scheduled to play one more game in Wrigley Field the following day, a Tuesday, then begin a six-game home stand on Wednesday. Manager Fred Hutchinson thought it would be nice for Musial to reach his milestone in front of the home fans, so he rested his star for the Tuesday afternoon game.

The Cardinals fell behind, 3-1, and in the sixth inning Hutchinson needed a pinch hitter. Musial was sent to bat for pitcher “Sad” Sam Jones and delivered a RBI-double that sparked a four-run rally. That double was hit No. 3,000.

It was nearly midnight when the Cardinals returned to St. Louis, but they were greeted at the railroad station by a huge throng of celebrating fans and well-wishers who were there to cheer their hero.

Musial was given a microphone and used it to thank the fans for their support. Then, noticing a lot of families in the throng he added, “I have a message for all kids here tonight.”